More magic

Happy birthday Rhys. Hope you had a good day.

We had a look around the central area of Galway and as usual it was very nice. Lots of pedestrian malls and lots of people filling them. Did a bus tour of the sights which was excellent. They are a great way to see the highlights and find out a bit of the local history.

From Galway we did a bit of an inland loop across some mountainous areas. They are not big mountains but very spectacular, with very rocky and steep areas. The base of the mountains was very swampy and marshy bogs. They havest peat from these areas which is virtually decaying plant matter. A bit like coal that hasn't had enough time to turn to coal. They cut the peat from the soil and leave it to dry in the paddocks. Once dry it is bagged stacked and dries futher before being burnt. The peat bogs are very spongy. If you stand in one place too long you begin to sink and when you  move it springs back. The whole area is dotted with lakes and streams and is quite amazing to see. The roads were shocking being narrow and very bumpy due to the soft ground.

At the top of the range it's a bit like the Omeo high plains or the Atherton tablelands. There are large open spaces which are also crossed by countless streams and heaps of lakes, some large and some small, but I think nearly all were connected. It was still rocky, harsh country but once again very spectacular.

Next we went to Donegal but it was sunday morning and everything was closed and no tours were operating so although it was a nice place there wasn't much to do so we drove on around the coast. Again it was a 5 hour drive with more amazing scenery mostly on roads that were not on our map. The only difference to normal was this is an Irish or Gaelic speaking area and the road signs were all in a foriegn language so navigation was by guess work. Some of the major intersections had signs in English but the more traditional locals had blacked it out on most occassions. Eventually we came to Letterkenny and stayed the night. Here we found the worst pub in Ireland. It was a huge flash place but had no atmosphere and the staff were unfriendly and I think confused by technology making them seem incompetent but at least they could pour a good pint.